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Dessert

Apple Pie

A pastry crust filled with sliced apples, sugar, lemon, cloves, mace, and a cream‑egg custard topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Prepare a puff pastry crust and place it around the edge of a pie dish.

  3. Peel, core, and quarter the apples, then layer half of them in the dish.

  4. Sprinkle half of the sugar over the apples, add lemon zest, and squeeze in some lemon juice.

  5. Scatter a few cloves over the apples, then layer the remaining apples and sugar, adding more lemon juice.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the apple peels and cores in water with a blade of mace until flavored, then strain and sweeten the liquid.

  2. Reduce the liquid until thick, then pour it into the pie.

Bake and finish

  1. Cover with the pastry crust and bake in the oven.

  2. Once baked, beat the yolks of two eggs with cream, nutmeg, and sugar over low heat until near boiling.

  3. Remove the pie lid and pour the egg mixture inside.

  4. Cut the crust into small triangles and place them on top of the pie.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, cooking down to soft, sweet fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws moisture out of the apples to form juices.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and balances the sweetness.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the cream mixture into a custard-like layer when gently heated.
Puff pastry crust
Forms a flaky, golden structure that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the egg and cream mixture over low heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle and turn grainy. Keeping the heat low and stirring helps it set smoothly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, clove, mace, egg, cream, nutmeg):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, clove, mace, egg, cream, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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